Office of the future: Using the structure of the human communication system to build the office of the future (I)

The basic concept of the Office of the Future is a natural outgrowth of the expansion of computers helping people in business do what they could not, or would not, do. The presentation will be confined to describing how computers will be used to provide a technological linkage between the three parts of the human communication process and to clearly communicate complex financial information to all levels of management. Communication, or lack thereof, is one of the most serious problems constraining efficient business operations. The human communication system uses three basic input and output channels to pass information. These three channels—voice, the written word, and symbols—provide a complete, sensitive and effective process that permits humans to communicate one with another. The system consists of a sender sending a message over one or more of the channels at a time, and the receiver receiving the message through one or more of the channels. The channels can and most often do have “static” in them caused by either the sender, the receiver or the channel. The static is more prevalent in business because different professional cultures have different vocabularies and customs. The result of the static is three levels of communication problems in business organizations: